Technology | The Guardian

‘The steering is so responsive, it made me want to zigzag down the road for a laugh’All the problems you might encounter with a BMW i3 will be because you have not planned your life around having one. You can’t charge it with an extension cable, so even if you have a plug installed in your forecourt (who has a forecourt?), parking must reach it. I was charging up with a cord 30m down my road, hopping in and out of the house to apologise to passersby.The mileometer is maddening: a promised 16 miles morphs mysteriously into 10 after you’ve gone down two streets. The company claims a range of 100 miles, thanks to its incredible battery: on the controls, it goes up to 80. But that comes with more riders than a presidential entourage: it depends on climate, driving style, weight of driver, weight of passenger, weight of handbag. Continue reading...

Musk announces Tesla Motors will debut a new roadster in four years and says upgrade to current Model S means car can go zero to 60mph in just 2.8 secondsElon Musk has made it official: his electric car company, Tesla Motors, is planning to debut an unnamed new Roadster in four years, and it won’t be based on the Lotus like the last one.But Musk isn’t done with the old cars yet. The electric tech mogul held a press conference on Friday to tell reporters how fast his old car goes with its new upgrade: zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds, which would put the four-door sedan in a league with high-end sports cars like the most recent Lamborghini Murciélago. Continue reading...

VFS Global, which provides visa services on behalf of the UK, released online application forms that allowed users to access other people’s data

Move follows judge’s recent ruling that government was legally mistaken in deciding not to introduce compensation scheme for musicians who faced lossesThe high court has quashed regulations introduced by the government to allow members of the public to lawfully copy CDs and other copyright material bought for their own private use. The move follows a judge’s recent ruling that the government was legally incorrect in deciding not to introduce a compensation scheme for songwriters, musicians and other rights holders who faced losses as a result of their copyright being infringed.The decision was won by the Musicians’ Union, UK Music and the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, with a legal team led by two QCs, Ian Mill and Tom de la Mare. UK Music estimated that the new regulations, without a compensation scheme, would result in loss of revenues for rights owners in the creative sector of £58m a year. Continue reading...

Conservatives announce cross-party commission, which will be asked to decide whether act is too expensive and overly intrusiveMinisters have launched a cross-party review of the Freedom of Information Act that is likely to be viewed as an attempt to curb public access to government documents. The move comes just hours after papers released on Friday under FOI disclosed that British pilots have been involved in bombing in Syria.Matthew Hancock, the Cabinet Office minister, laid a statement before parliament outlining details about the five-person commission that will be asked to decide whether the act is too expensive and overly intrusive. Members will include Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, who is already on the record calling for the act to be rewritten. Straw is still the subject of FOI requests over the rendition of a terror suspect during his time in office. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterHello, it’s Friday. Today’s game is Solar Shifter EX, a top-down bullet hell shooter from Elder Games, the one-man studio formed by Hungarian developer, Ede Tarsoly.Solar Shifter features a jump shift mechanic that lets you warp out of danger zones faster than Kenny Loggins. Coming to PC later this year it’ll hit Xbox One and PS4 in 2016. Continue reading...

With the help of smartphone apps and FitBit-like devices, women can now track and understand their monthly menstrual cycles and pregnancies digitally

Decision to stop short of a full-on purge of site’s most controversial threads demonstrates awakening within Reddit to a long-acknowledged problem: the site might not be able to survive without themReddit finally began contending with the hate-filled parts of its popular internet free-for-all on Thursday, as new leadership vowed to crack down on the site’s baroque selection of pornography and to isolate other “content that violates a common sense of decency”.Dozens of so-called “subreddits” devoted to images and fantasies of rape and violence have now vanished, less than one week after Reddit’s female chief executive departed amid a chorus of death threats and slurs from the site’s notoriously toxic users. Continue reading...

Company posts better-than-expected profit as it announces 11% rise in advertising revenue in call to investors with new CFO Ruth PoratGoogle finally ended its losing streak on Thursday when it beat expectations and posted better-than-expected profit for the first time in six quarters.The company’s advertising revenue jumped 11% from last year to $16.02bn. Its consolidated revenue rose 11% to $17.73bn. The number of ads, or paid clicks, increased by 18%. Continue reading...

Wells-Barnett was a prominent suffragist and anti-lynching activist who used her platform as a newspaper editor to decry racial inequality in the late 19th centuryAs civil rights past and present remain in focus after the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, and the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, Google is celebrating journalist and activist Ida B Wells-Barnett’s 153rd birthday with a “Google doodle”.

ESports deserves a better documentary than this dull and sentimental celebration of competitive gamingESports – competitive team video gaming played out in front of a stadiums full of fans – deserves its Hoop Dreams. Professional players, showing off their prowess in games such as League of Legends and Dota 2, vie for giant prize money in tournaments watched online by millions. Corruption and match-fixing allegations have dogged the sport, like any other. The subject has spice and drama aplenty. Yet All Work All Play ignores all that for dry praise of the sport’s progress, peppered with the odd bit of soupy sentimentality. Gaming has inspired very good documentaries in recent years (Indie Game: The Movie, Free to Play), made by film-makers that understand character and plot. But All Work All Play makes for a dull, corporate documentary. Continue reading...

Lauri Love held in Suffolk and facing possible extradition to US over claims he hacked agencies including Nasa and the Federal Reserve

Sometime in 1993, my beloved Morris Traveller was badly damaged and I took it to Charlie Ware’s Morris Minor Centre in Bath: I wandered into the workshop and thence into a rather untidy (and oily) office where I was welcomed and asked all about my car, how long I had owned it, my maintenance schedule etc, by a middle-aged man who was clearly enormously enthused by all things Minor-related.Rather belatedly, I realised I had actually met Charlie himself, an almost legendary figure to those of us who tasked ourselves with keeping these venerable vehicles on the road. Picking it up some weeks later, he talked again about how I had managed to keep the paint inside the chassis-boxes immaculate while the outside was in a bit of a state. It was a delight to find such boyish enthusiasm in one who spent his life surrounded by elderly vehicles and encouraged me to keep my own vehicle on the road – which I did for another 15 years. Continue reading...

Leading women in the tech industry say the Reddit CEO’s resignation shows Silicon Valley still has a woman problem but some feel attitudes are changing fastIt is 2015 and for many working in tech, it is still not a good time to be a woman.Just ask Ellen Pao, who resigned as interim CEO of Reddit last week, after being subjected to abuse from the site’s members. Or ask other women in the industry who have had similar experiences. These women are not surprised by what has happened to Pao – the abuse, the resignation, the lack of support from her company – in fact, many of them have anticipated it. Yet despite that, they are undeterred and hope that one day down the road, maybe as soon as 2020, women and men could be treated as equal in Silicon Valley. Continue reading...

Toys are starting to talk back to children, but they may not be better for your children than a silent teddyThink back to when you were a child: the thought of your favourite doll or teddy bear learning your name and intelligently talking to you would be simply magical.That’s the promise of connected toys. Hello Barbie is a $75 doll that can listen to your child and respond intelligently; CognitToys offers an artificial intelligence dinosaur for $120 that learns with children, getting smarter as they do; and the Avakai is a €67 wooden toy that communicates over the internet. Continue reading...

Katie hasn’t bought a laptop for 10 years and needs an introduction to the current market. She wants something small that can handle Microsoft Word and Excel

The handicraft look has been explored in many recent games, but Nintendo’s latest platformer exploits it in cute, interesting and compellin waysFrom The Great British Bake Off to the vast number of crafting magazines bulging off the newsagent shelves, the handmade look is definitely in vogue. This trend has even been reflected in games, beginning perhaps with loveable platformer LittleBigPlanet, and most recently seen in the Xbox One title Unravelled. Here’s another example: Yoshi’s Woollen World, a follow-up of sorts to developer Good Feel’s Wii title, Kirby’s Epic Yarn.In Woolly World, it’s not just about cute aesthetics: the handmade theme of the visuals adds to the tactility of the Yoshi universe. These games have always been very physical because of the character’s signature jump, not quite as famous as Mario’s, but more distinctive as he kicks his legs and audibly strains to reach higher platforms. Here, your cuddly dinosaur squishes the cushioned ground underfoot, jumps onto stitched platforms suspended between knitting needles and encounters enemy crabs with scissors for claws. Spools of thread hang on the walls, knotted seagulls fly past, and doors unzip and curl back to let you through. Even familiar world themes look more interesting in cloth: lava has a sequined sheen, its heat rays made of string, and winter hats stand in for mountains in the backdrop as Yoshi rolls a snowball made of cotton wool. Continue reading...

If customers are to embrace the new era of connectivity, devices must be imbued with a touch of magic, says MIT researcherOne of the leading thinkers in the new computing sector known as the internet of things (IoT) can’t help but look at all the flashy, expensive, feature-packed gadgets on the market today – things like Google Glass or the Apple Watch – and keep coming away with the same thought: too many device makers keep getting it wrong.Given the nature of his chosen field, serial entrepreneur David Rose – who’s also a researcher with the MIT Media Lab, where he’s taught for six years – might be expected to want the next generation of connected devices to pick up where smartphones leave off. Indeed, that seems to be the nature of the race to figure out what the next dominant computing platform looks like, whether it’s Facebook snatching up Oculus or Microsoft working to bring its HoloLens to fruition. Continue reading...

Fear of missing out, nomophobia and Facebook addiction disorder are just some of the digital-related anxieties starting to affect our increasingly online lives. Some 35% of millennials list fear of missing out as one of the top three reason for using social media. But how much of a problem are these disorders? And if you are suffering, what can you do about it? Ollie Peart investigates Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Thursday! Sorry about yesterday, I was at the Develop conference watching Randy Pitchford doing magic tricks (“look, I made Aliens Colonial Marines disappear!”) Continue reading...

Surge in sales of big-ticket items in Greece is partly responsible for boosting pretax profits to £381m, up from £316m the previous yearDixons Carphone has reported a 21% rise in profits, in part helped by Greeks panic buying big-ticket items such as large-screen TVs as a safe haven for their cash amid the ongoing economic crisis in the country.

Media regulator says is considering whether fibre broadband should be split from rest of the business after complaints it is not fairly shared with rivals

Eric Migicovsky says Pebble is the Swatch of iPhone wearables and predicts, as with smartphones in 2007, the key experiences are yet to come“When I look five years ahead, I see computers getting smaller and smaller, and I see them really worn on our bodies. We’re going to be wearing more computers on us: I think that’s inevitable.”You would probably say the same if you were Eric Migicovsky, who runs smartwatch maker Pebble, whose business model involves selling people computers to wear on their bodies. Continue reading...

Reed Hastings announces stronger-than-expected earnings and 65m subscribers but firm is considering how to push consumers toward more expensive plansNetflix CEO Reed Hastings told investors on Wednesday that the company was preparing to carefully push consumers toward higher-priced plans in the US in the coming years.Share prices slipped early in the day and then soared more than 10% on after-hours trading as the stronger-than-expected second-quarterresults were announced. The company’s stock also split seven-for-one on Wednesday.

US firm TCYK, apparently named after film The Company You Keep, made Sky hand over details of customers accused of downloading movieDozens of UK broadband customers have received letters from a US firm accusing them of pirating a little-known Robert Redford film and inviting them to pay a financial settlement on pain of further legal action.TCYK LLC, a legal firm apparently named after the initials of the film in question, The Company You Keep, obtained a court order against Sky Broadband this year requiring it to hand over the details of customers that TCYK alleges used torrent sites to download and distribute the film. Continue reading...

Now-deleted picture of comedian taken by surveillance helicopter is to be investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office after privacy debateA picture tweeted by a police helicopter team showing comedian Michael McIntyre standing in a London street is being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office for a possible breach of data protection laws.

Authorities including councils, government departments and the police breach data security – with many repeat offenders, says freedom of information groupPublic bodies are unintentionally releasing confidential personal information on a regular basis, research reveals.Freedom of information website WhatDoTheyKnow.com, which automates FOI requests and publishes responses, says it has recorded 154 accidental data leaks made by councils, government departments, police, the NHS and other public bodies since 2009. This amounts to confidential data being wrongly released on average once every fortnight. Continue reading...

Does the expanding network of connected devices herald a brave new compact for our digital lives – or the end of politics?The word “thing”, in Old English, means a meeting or assembly. In the epic poem Beowulf, the eponymous hero declares he’ll “alone hold a thing” with the monster Grendel, who is terrorising the Danes in the great hall of Heorot. Beowulf uses “thing” euphemistically – it is a meeting that immediately descends into a fight.The Icelandic parliament is still called Althing (Alþingi). But over the ages, “things” have gradually evolved from meetings to matter. Today, we primarily use the term “thing” to refer to objects. Even in this sense, however, things are still core to our political and social lives. Continue reading...

The culture minister has spoken at the Develop conference in Brighton about games industry tax credits and the vital cultural role of the sectorVideo games are as important to British culture as film, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has claimed during a keynote speech at the Develop conference in Brighton.Speaking to an audience of developers, publishers and investors, Vaizey, who has backed the games industry since becoming Shadow Culture Minister in 2006, also highlighted the success of video game tax credits, which were introduced last year, allowing studios based in the UK to claim relief on up to 25% of their production costs. Continue reading...

Chief executive Satya Nadella says Microsoft is not getting out of mobile, but strategy is shifting from Windows Phone to Windows 10 everywhereAfter cutting 7,800 staff and taking a $7.6bn loss on its Windows Phone division, Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella intends to ramp up the company’s invasion of iPhone and Android with its apps and services.While the write-down has been seen as effectively neutering the remainder of the smartphone business Microsoft bought from Nokia in 2012, Nadella insists that his company is not exiting the smartphone market. Continue reading...

Gearbox co-founder hints at bitter attacks received over Aliens Colonial Marines controversy in keynote speech at Develop conferenceRandy Pitchford, the chief executive of Gearbox Software, has used a keynote speech at the Develop conference in Brighton to address the issue of vocal, highly critical gamers – with specific references to the controversy over the studio’s 2013 release Aliens: Colonial Marines.After performing a magic trick based on the Three Card Monte street scam, the industry veteran told attendees that, while many spectators would quietly appreciate any entertainment act, a small percentage would be critical and would seek to validate that by attempting to convert others. Continue reading...

People will now have more power to moderate edits on the service, with ‘a community of well-intentioned users’ fending off digital vandalismGoogle is relaunching its Map Maker tool, which allows people to make edits to its Google Maps service, but will give its community of users more powers to moderate digital vandalism.The tool was shut down in May, shortly after an image of the Android robot urinating on an Apple logo was discovered on Google Maps just south of the Pakistani city of Rawlpindi, having been added using Map Maker. Continue reading...

Advertising Standards Board deem ‘Fanta Crew’ characters target young children. Under self-regulation, junk food may not be advertised directly to under 12sA TV commercial and an iPhone app for the soft drink Fanta has been pulled after the Advertising Standards Board deemed its cartoon-style “Fanta Crew” characters were directed at children as young as nine.Under the self-regulation of advertising rules, junk food may not be advertised directly to children under 12. One 450ml bottle of Fanta has about 14 teaspoons of sugar. Continue reading...

Following Ellen Pao’s departure, interim CEO Steve Huffman says Reddit is not obligated to support ‘reprehensible’ communities on the siteOn the heels of the departure of CEO Ellen Pao last week and its chief engineer shortly thereafter, Reddit’s top executive has now said the site is not about free speech.The company’s interim CEO, Steve Huffman, flatly told users in a post on the site on Tuesday evening that Reddit does not have “an obligation” to support all Reddit communities. Huffman’s post came after days of uncertainty about the company’s direction following Pao’s apology and subsequent resignation. Continue reading...

The story fairly accurately mimicked the look and feel of Bloomberg News and carried the byline of a staff writer but the website address and errors gave it awayTwitter’s shares jumped more than 8% on Tuesday after a fake online story said the company had received a $31bn takeover offer.The shares jumped from $36.80 to $38.60 in less than 10 minutes after the fabricated story was posted to Twitter and began to circulate. Continue reading...

Nintendo chief executive who helped bring video games to a family audienceSatoru Iwata, who has died aged 55 of a bile duct tumour, was that rarest of beasts: the president and CEO of a giant company who retained the human touch and nurtured a relationship with his consumers that felt personal. As the man who had held the reins at the colossal video games company Nintendo since 2002, he did more than anyone else to bring video games to a mainstream, family audience. He presided over the launches of the Nintendo DS handheld gaming system – the second-most successful console to date, after Sony’s PlayStation 2 – and the Nintendo Wii, with its innovative, much-copied motion-sensing, TV remote-style controller, which appealed to a generation that had previously found video games intimidating.Genial, approachable and solicitous in person, and always with a humorous glint in his eye, Iwata never conformed to the stereotype of the haughty CEO – although he was forced to take plenty of tough decisions in the harsh Japanese corporate world, where shareholders’ responses to quarterly results hold sway and losing face is not an option. Uniquely among CEOs of the games industry’s leading players, he began his working life as a programmer, and retained a lifelong enthusiasm for making and playing games. Continue reading...

EA Sports has abandoned Tiger Woods in favour of a new star and the result includes richly detailed visuals, and feels like a fresh start for the seriesFor 24 years, the PGA Tour series has dominated the world of golfing simulations, its hegemony threatened only by the mostly PC-based Links series – and the more approachable Everybody’s Golf. Tiger Woods has been the cover star since 1998, but considering his wane in fortunes, it is understandable that he has been bundled into a golf cart and sent on his way. Now Rory McIlroy, who looks just as fiercely motivated and skilled as the young Tiger once did, will front a fresh chapter for the series.At first, long-time fans will most likely find the absence of Woods jarring, at first. It feels strange to begin the “Prologue” section of the game and find McIlroy staring back at you recanting his own experiences, rather than reliving some of Tiger’s many achievements. But the nostalgia fades as McIlroy, directly addressing the player, talks about how it feels to stand on the opening tee in the final round of a major championship. It is unusually candid, offering a lot more insight than most golfers ever would in a TV interview. Continue reading...

#Mecca Live trends on Twitter with snaps providing insight into Saudi city closed to non-Muslims

Previous justice secretary said satellite tracking tags would come into use by end of last year, but project has had significant problemsThe introduction of the next generation of GPS tracking of offenders, including convicted paedophiles, has been delayed for at least another 12 months, the Ministry of Justice has announced.The prisons minister, Andrew Selous, said there had been significant problems with the project which meant it was impossible to meet the deadline for the £265m six-year contract to begin. Continue reading...

The right to be forgotten has highlighted the need for information merchants to be much more transparent about their decision-making process

Data shows 95% of Google privacy requests are from citizens out to protect personal and private information – not criminals, politicians and public figuresGoogle’s data leak reveals flaws in making it judge and jury over our rights Less than 5% of nearly 220,000 individual requests made to Google to selectively remove links to online information concern criminals, politicians and high-profile public figures, the Guardian has learned, with more than 95% of requests coming from everyday members of the public.The Guardian has discovered new data hidden in source code on Google’s own transparency report that indicates the scale and flavour of the types of requests being dealt with by Google – information it has always refused to make public. The data covers more than three-quarters of all requests to date. Continue reading...

Economic policy speech slams the ‘on-demand economy’ following lawsuits against startups like Uber over responsibility to workers and employee rights

New service built into social network’s Messenger chat app aids with product research and purchases, connecting users with knowledgeable peopleFacebook is testing a service called “Moneypenny” that connects users of its Messenger chat app to real people for product-buying advice, according to reports.

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Tuesday. Today’s screenshot is from Quiver of Crows, a twin-stick shooter by Orange County-based studio Sheado.net. Continue reading...

For $15 a month the web-based add-on will feature the major broadcast networks and PBS and HBO – and might signal the end of the old-fashioned cable landscapeWill traditional cable die the death of a thousand cuts? Comcast said late on Sunday it would begin selling a web-based service called Stream, with content from the major broadcast networks and PBS and HBO. The programming will be available as a $15 add-on to Comcast’s internet-only package.

Anti-surveillance campaigner and former Microsoft privacy chief who warned of online state snooping many years before Edward SnowdenCaspar Bowden, who has died of cancer aged 53, warned of online state snooping many years before Edward Snowden, and ran a successful campaign to stop surveillance laws becoming even worse than they are. He entered the fray in 1997, when Tony Blair went back on a pre-election promise not to demand government access to cryptographic keys. At a Scrambling for Safety conference convened at the London School of Economics to thrash out a response, Caspar emerged as knowledgable, articulate and passionate.He was born in London, the only child of Kenneth and Angela Bowden, though he had two older half-brothers, Malcolm and Simon. He attended Westminster school and read mathematics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but spent a lot of time working on artificial intelligence and failed his degree. He found a job as a programmer at Island Logic, then moved to Goldman Sachs, working on projects including option pricing and cryptographic software. He became an active member of the Labour party in Islington, and by 1997 was chair of Scientists for Labour. Continue reading...

The US company is to launch its contactless payment system, which will be accepted at more than 250,000 locations, on TuesdayApple Pay is set to launch in the UK on Tuesday, allowing iPhone users to tap and pay with their phones.It is the first time it has been launched outside the US, and will be available to users with an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. It is also compatible with the Apple Watch. Continue reading...

Artist Robin Lee was arrested on suspicion of ‘abstracting electricity’ after plugging his phone in to charge it when travelling from Hackney to Camden

Tweet by man who claimed to be stuck in a bag triggered flurry of online attention before it was revealed to be a hoaxEarly on Monday morning as the T in the Park music festival was winding down a man calling himself Scott Johnston, 23, tweeted: “Hi im somewhere in green 7 someone has packed me into a tent bag for a joke and I can’t get out I don’t have much battery left.”@Tinthepark hi im somewhere in green 7 someone has packed me into a tent bag for a joke and I can't get out I don't have much battery left Continue reading...

Fans, gamers, developers and colleagues pay tribute to Satoru Iwata, the leading figure behind some of Nintendo’s most popular devicesTributes for Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata, who has died from cancer at the age of 55, have been flooding in on social media.Since Nintendo announced the news on Monday morning, tributes to the self-confessed “gamer at heart” have sent the hashtag #ThankYouIwata trending on Twitter. Continue reading...